I’m not sure if this is a unpopular opinion but right now being able to just spam parry and be basically invincible with minimal effort is not a good thing.
Havoc 40, 0 melee talents, just spamming the button as fast as I can press it:
Yeah not the best clear time or anything, maybe like 16 seconds peak (this is literally my second attempt). But like this group isn’t trivial to clear on havoc 40 with most melee builds, it takes being fairly attentive and reasonably skilled to not catch a few stray hits from the ragers. VS just spamming parry until they all fall over.
Its not even really the damage that is crazy good, its more just how easy it is to trivialize most melee situations on ranged builds.
I feel like the only change that is really required here is to make the parry counter attack only trigger on a perfect parry. Still counts as a block through the whole parry window, but doesn’t trigger the counter attack that staggers enemies and deals high damage. Maybe even just triggering a less powerful counter attack with much lower stagger (its really the stagger that makes it good at getting out of bad situations). At least then you would need to at least try in these situations.
Parry is very powerful, especially on classes that have stamina recovery talents (like vet or scum). The problem is that it’s hard to use offensively with teammates around, because they will keep disrupting enemies. You can’t protect your ranged teammate by parrying and you can’t deal with gunner spam by parrying. It’s stuck on a weapon that otherwise has issues dealing with armor, so I think it’s fine (yes, I know, scum exists, and it makes it overpowered, just like every other melee weapon, not weapon’s fault).
My point mostly is that you can put it on a ranged build and then just ignore melee as a serious threat. Like that helbore build deals incredibly high damage into everything and has all but literally infinite ammo. Normally the drawback would be that you cant do melee, but when the consequence for getting caught in melee is just “spam parry until the problem goes away” even if your team isnt helping at all. It just feels like too good of a survival tool, at least with the old versions of this vet build with the old dueling sword you had to actually play melee to get rid of things attacking you, dodge, push, land attacks etc. Now you just spam one button and they die.
I think against that particular spawn set it’s quite strong. Throw in some mauler overheads and crusher overheads it is a bit of different tale. I think this is also a .5 stamina regen delay thing, you have to be way more intentional on like Skit or Zealot.
I would agree, however that build just one taps maulers and two shots crushers with the helbore so as long as your doing your job and killing those enemies, or pick them off before you get stuck in melee. Its really not a problem.
I understand where you are coming from, but I don’t think it’s bad for a weapon to be strong in one specific scenario which isn’t easy to replicate in a real game.
There is a reason you don’t see this weapon often despite how strong parry is. I too used to run it on veteran but I swapped over to a shock maul, because it feels very bad not being able to deal with crushers in reasonable time. When you try to time your parry for overheads, other enemies will trigger it instead. It’s a substantial risk. Ranged build or not, melee is not optional in this game.
I guess it is a good combo with helbore, since helbore can deal with crushers. But playing helbore is an act of martyrdom so it’s deserved.
What do you mean? Helbore is incredibly good. I dont get why people act like helbore is super hard or unwieldy.
Also crushers are easy to dodge, maulers can sneak into groups and hit you with hard to read overheads but that’s relatively rare. When you are only using dodges to avoid those two attacks its not really hard.
And I’m not saying they should nerf parry necessarily. I’m just saying they should make parry take any actual skill to use.
My experience with the devils claw sword is that for every game the parry comes in clutch, 10 more go by without using it in any meaningful way at all. Things die too quickly, even on 40. There’s a lot of defensive talents and abilities that are really strong in clutch scenarios, but ultimately hurt you overall because of how infrequently you get to leverage them.
Well yeah its not like I whip out the devil’s claw much in my games. But that is sort of the point. Its a minmaxed ranged build that just never uses melee except when to save itself. For that role its so stupid easy that it feels like cheating. Same goes for many psyker builds and hell even some hive scum builds. Just being able to spam parry to get out of bad situations for free is silly, parrying should be at least somewhat hard to do.
I guess ya, I’ve just used it a lot and have come to the conclusion that there are better options due to how infrequently I get to leverage its strengths. If the parry got nerfed or buffed it wouldn’t change my decision to not use it, because that decision is based on not getting into the kinds of situations where it shines frequently enough to make it worthwhile.
Parry is incredibly good against Ragers since they just keep spamming attacks. If you’re against any other horde type you’re better off just attacking as they either attack too slow to be worth it or you’ll end up parrying an overhead unwittingly and die.
It feels godlike the first time you parry a daemonhost to death (easier with the psyker talent that uses peril instead of stamina) but it doesn’t take long to realise that the devil’s claw sword itself is a blunt piece of tin and in no danger of being overpowered.
Getting stuck in the middle of a mixed horde is the very thing that would kill 90% of vet ranged builds. Just being able to spam parry and get out of it for free feels like it is too easy.
On a build that just never uses it’s melee weapon in the first place, and you only bring out melee for when you are stuck in a horde and need something to get you out. Which is most ranged builds. I just dont know why you would pick anything else. I guess it just depends on the builds you like, like again Im not trying to argue the sword is OP, Im just saying the parry is too easy to use.
Never said its OP, just that the Parry is too easy to use for builds that otherwise struggle with melee. Giving ranged builds a get out of jail free card that takes 0 skill to use is just a bit silly.
Costs stam to parry and stops working when you run out of stamina so it is easy to become overwhelmed. There are also small windows of vulnerability as far as I can tell.
If there is a small window of vulnerability I have never seen it. Also just put +20% block efficency, +2 stamina, and a +3 stamina curio (you probably want these things for running around anyways). Then you just dont run out of stamina, like I never ran out of stamina in any game I played running this. Mostly just due to the stagger and cleave on that attack being unreasonably high.
Fair enough, if it works for you. No wrong answers. I just have actively decided against using it on my ranged focused vet and psyker, on havoc, after having tried it out extensively, so I don’t see a nerf as warranted. But ultimately it wouldn’t affect me, so I guess I’m just dropping my two cents.
The main issue with Helbore IMO is that you need space to cook that the game doesn’t give you. It’s more annoying than difficult. I find myself constantly having to switch to melee or drop grenades just to use it.
Depends on the team, but I have gotten pretty comfortable just dodging and using the gun in melee. You still kill things pretty fast just shooting them point blank and the mobility isnt bad either. So instead of switching to melee most of the time I just dodge and then shoot them in the face. Its got good cleave as well. Plus using the Mk IIIa or even just not fully charging the Mk IV, it doesnt shoot that much slower then the infantry lasgun.
it turns out the devils claw is good against a group of only the enemies it’s good against coming from one direction in a narrow hallway. Thank you datatide